IIUG Insider (Issue #83)May 2007

Highlights: Important announcement about the new IIUG Informix conference in 2008

Welcome to the International Informix Users Group (IIUG) Insider! Designed for IIUG members and Informix user group leaders, this publication contains timely and relevant information for the IBM Informix community.

These are exciting days if you are an Informix user. We are watching a data server, one of the greats, Informix, come back from many thought was certain death. There was a time when we were unsure about what IBM was going to do with technology. They certainly confused me. But the confusion has finished within the camp and the technology is back and kicking.

Cheetah, soon to be renamed to the very boring IDS 11.1, is a great product and one that is worth developing against and upgrading too. There are many ways you can find out about what's in the product, if you try. But to make it easy I have added a pile of Cheetah links for you to check it out.

But this is more that the release of another great edition of IDS. This launch is about IBM telling its customers and its competitors that the great Informix data server is really back. As customers and users, you should be delighted. IBM is really putting money where its mouth is. The investment in the development of Cheetah has been huge. The investment in getting it to market, is bigger than every before.

So what turned the Big Blue around? Well... a number of things. Firstly, you as customers just refused to let the product die. You would rather run IDS than move to any of the other competitive products. Secondly many ISVs stayed loyal and continued to sell the product. Why? Simple. IDS is a very robust data server, it is stable, it is very fast, and it does not need a small army of DBAs to run it. And in this world where cash counts, Informix generates cash and it saves cash. And thirdly, Informix is becoming a very sexy product to have on your CV. This is no legacy product. Informix is nothing to be ashamed about. The skills you have, as Informix developers and IDS DBAs, has given you in-demand skills. The job market is growing and this is the start of a real rebirth of the great Informix of the '80s and '90s.

Enough said.

Now. Read on down. You will find information about IDS and links to training, to product information, to conference proceedings, to new conferences, to a whole lot of other stuff.

After a three year partnership with the International DB2 Users Group (IDUG), the IIUG Board of Directors has decided to host our own conference. The new conference will debut in the Spring of 2008.

This conference will truly be a grass roots effort, with conference staff positions filled by volunteer IIUG and local user group members. Yet, it will feature the high level of content you have come to expect at major IBM and Informix conferences. The Conference Planning Committee is spearheaded by the same well-known Informix user community leaders that have been integral to the success of the earlier regional Forums in Washington, DC, and Atlanta, as well as the Informix segments in recent IBM and IDUG/IIUG conferences.

Although we are only in the planning stages, we can tell you that the conference will be a Three Full Day event, with some special keynote speakers. It will have timely technical sessions given by top Informix presenters, along with as many of the Developers from the IBM Informix Labs in Lenexa as we can pry away from their terminals.

And, perhaps the best news: The price of admission will be well below that of other conferences you may have had to miss in the past due to their high cost. Well below!

Please stay tuned to the Insider and the IIUG Web site in the next few months for announcements, a Call for Speakers, Vendor sponsorship opportunities, and much more.

The early, early bird special rate of $1595 finishes up on the 31st May, but a special IIUG member rate of $1695 goes into effect on the 1st of June through the 15th of August. Use the IIUG User Group discount code LVUFMX when registering for either rate.

IBM Information On Demand 2007 is the premier information management event for business and IT executives, managers, IT professionals, DBAs and developers. Select from over 600 technical and business sessions, receive the best in technical education, free certification testing, extensive networking opportunities and access and exposure to the full breadth of IBM Information Management technologies and experts. In the product Expo Center you can talk to experts about the products, tools, and services you need from IBM and IBM Business Partners to manage your information infrastructure.

The Kansas City Informix User Group is sponsoring a Tech Day on June 12th, 2007! Mark your calendar for this exciting event that is linked to the next release of Informix Dynamic Server - Cheetah!!

We have scheduled a meeting for next month at the IBM Lenexa, Kansas Office. Please join us!! Come and meet your local IBM Developers, Support Team and Management to find out what is new and exciting at IBM! The most exciting thing
happening this year will be the next release of Informix Dynamic Server, or CHEETAH! There will be a lot to discuss about Cheetah at this meeting.

Agenda

8:30 am - 9:00 am

Continental Breakfast and Registration

9:00 am - 9:15 am

Welcome and Introductions

9:15 am - 10:00 am

Overview of IDS "Cheetah". Jerry Keesee, IBM Director of R&D for Informix, will announce some exciting news about the next release of the Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) -code-named "Cheetah." He will highlight the new features, and cover results of the recent beta test run, along with a roadmap showing the direction of future IDS releases.

10:00 am - 10:30 am

Agile - Performance enhancements in Cheetah, application development. If you thought IDS was fast now, just wait until you get your hands on the latest updates that deliver peak performance to your applications. Learn what has been added in IDS Cheetah (and what you've been missing if you are still on IDS 7.31). Find out the implementation details so you can take advantage of these for your solutions.

10:45 am - 11:45 am

Agile - Extending IDS further with Location Based Services and Basic Text Search. Do you Web 2.0? Find out more about how you can take advantage of a Services Oriented Architecture to easily deliver location based information to your applications. IDS extensibility and the new Web Feature Services in Cheetah make this possible. The new Basic Text Search that is included in IDS Cheetah will also be covered.

12:30 pm - 1:45 pm

Invisible - Enter the "Administration-Free Zone". If you like the 'hands-free' reliability of IDS, you're gonna love the new tools that make administration even easier. The new OpenAdmin Tool for IDS provides a GUI based view of all of your data server activities - starting with a map of server locations that can drill down to the detail of an individual SQL statement. Other new features allow automatic scheduling to keep your weekends free.

2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Resilient - Availability Solutions in IDS "Cheetah". IDS has long provided multiple robust solutions to support high availability of your data. IDS "Cheetah" builds on those strengths with new options to design the right availability solution to meet your needs. Learn how customers achieve 99.999% availability (less than 5 minutes downtime per year), and how these new choices can improve performance and provide workload management for easy scalability.

3:00 pm - 3:30 pm

Resilient and Secure - Protecting your Information Assets. Learn how the new security features in IDS, including Label Based Access Control (LBAC), can help you protect the information assets in your IDS databases. New levels of control will make it easier to isolate protected information to meet regulatory compliance requirements and gain competitive advantage.

3:30 pm - 5:00 pm

View the Demos and Meet the Experts. We are fortunate that our meeting is in the same location as the IDS R&D team. You've seen the presentations, now take time to talk to the experts who created these new features, and see demos that illustrate how you can use the new functionality in your applications.

Doors open at 8:30 am for continental breakfast. Lunch and an afternoon snack will also be provided **

With the title "Verizon keeps customer service high with a resilient, flexible information infrastructure from IBM" you might just wonder what it is all about. But it is about how and why Verizon use Informix IDS

Some quotes.

"We have no limits to our scalability," says Poole. "Some of our systems have grown tenfold and it hasn't been an issue because of how Informix is designed."

"The efficiencies delivered by IDS have been essential in helping Verizon rapidly provision new services while keeping operational costs low."

"With each new version, IDS offers features that help us reduce total cost of ownership and optimize efficiency even further," concludes Poole."

If you have management that is still dithering about IDS as their long term strategic data server then get them to read this.

This Information Management IBM Redbook provides an overview of the high availability and enterprise replication features of Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) Version 10, which can simplify and automate enterprise database deployment. Version 10 offers patent-pending technology that virtually eliminates downtime and automates many of the tasks associated with deploying mission-critical enterprise systems.

The IDS 11 release, codenamed "Cheetah", features significant additions over prior versions. It offers many new features for application developers, hierarchical data structure support, and improved query capabilities across multiple instances of the database. It also supports the services-oriented architecture (SOA) model for application integration, comes with a new deployment wizard for minimizing the disk space required for a custom install, and includes many new features that make life easier for DBAs.

Spread the news to your partners that they can benefit from being part of the IDS Cheetah launch by emailing validate@ca.ibm.com. In addition to the "Ready for Informix" label, there are press, analyst, and marketing opportunities associated with the IDS Cheetah launch, plus other opportunities to highlight solutions at upcoming events, including being a part of the Informix Zone at the 2007 Information On Demand Conference in October.

The next few weeks will be exciting! Many local user groups are planning events - if you are in the midwest, be sure to join us in Lenexa on June 12th. This link at the IIUG site shows current local user group events:

Can't tell you when, all very heavy secrecy and all that, but a new people focused video IDS video is coming out of a secret French Video lab. Hopefully it will be in English. Will keep you posted as I hear more.

The Board will be formally meeting at the IBM IOD event in October at Los Vegas. Have you got ideas that you want bought up to the Board? If so, then send them to me and I will make sure they get on the agenda (I write the agenda). :)

So participate. Let us know what you think and how this great organisation can help you. Just email me at david@iiug.org.

Cheers.

David Fraser

BTW. Have you noticed the changes to the IIUG web site? This is a work in progress designed to make navigation through the site easier. Let us know what you think.

The International Informix Users Group (IIUG) is an organization designed to enhance communications between its worldwide user community and IBM. IIUG's membership database now exceeds 25,000 entries and enjoys the support and commitment of IBM's Data Management division. Key programs include local user groups and special interest groups, which we promote and assist from launch through growth.

Sources:

IIUG Board of Directors
IBM Corp.

Editors:

David Fraser
Gary Ben-Israel
Stuart Litel

For comments, ideas, information, more ideas, gossip, lies and general chatter, please send an email todavid@iiug.org.